The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs

In a Chats in the Stacks book talk Saida Hodžić, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell, will present her book, The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs (The University of California Press, November 2016). Despite lower rates of female genital cutting in the last 30 years, there has there been an increase in NGOs, both local and international, campaigning in Africa against the practice. Hodžić examines over thirty years of reproductive health campaigns “problematizing and criminalizing” female cutting in Ghana, and the significance of their transnational ties and regional roles, resultant changes in laws and institutions, political projects, opposition movements, and the bringing about of social transformations.